An old friend, Andrew Schwartz, whose intellectual historian work focuses on rational conservatism, tossed a question my way a while ago that I would like the opportunity to unpack here. He asked me about motivation and superiority, explicitly, “do the superior somehow strive for inferiority, or at the very least, strive for the acceptance of the inferior?” As a psychologist, I’ll spend a bit of time with the two layers of this question, namely the idea of being better than others, and also what constitutes not becoming better. To begin to answer this question, I’ll offer a tentative, “no.” I believe …
On feeling our feelings
In my practice, I see many people that have a difficult time understanding their feelings. Those persons often know their feelings as only “good” or “bad” and it is painfully difficult undergoing emotional exploration, or discovering particular shadings of each emotion. In most cases, those persons that have a hard time understanding their feelings also come from a personal history in which they were not allowed to feel their feelings. What do I mean when I say that a person, “isn’t allowed to feel his or her feelings?” Feelings can be silenced, strangled, or disallowed in many interactions. As children, …
On love and agreeing
For many people, I imagine this blog post will be a difficult one to read. I am prefacing this post with that statement because I believe it is very difficult to look at ourselves, especially when looking at something as personal as how we feel loved and how we express our love. Love and agreeing are two separate relational stances, yet for many people, they are the same stance. Problems arise because the two are often conflated, especially during times of conflict. When things are going swimmingly between two people, and two people love each other, also agreeing with each …
On the death of one’s parent
As children, our parents guide us through the world, and help shield us from the many hardships therein. As much as they guide us through the world, they also feel like our world. They are our protectors, champions, and are the ground beneath our feet. Our parents often speak our language, and in speaking to us, they can speak for us. Or at least that is what parenting is supposed to be. Parents can fail, make mistakes, and wound us in ways that no one else can, and yet, when our parents leave us, and die, even the ones that …
On tough love
After spending a week thinking about love, and thinking about how expressions of love can be twisted or broken, I found myself thinking about the idea of tough love. The term was supposedly coined by Bill Milliken, in his seminal work, “Tough Love.” The appropriately named text, published in 1970, extolled Milliken’s personal, if evangelical, philosophy that love is good and arises from a deftly authoritarian place. This concept of love sits upon the hardened idea that love exists to better others, so that they, themselves, can become good. This idea of love, and specifically of tough love, galvanizes another …
On saying “I love you”
I think I will offer my definition of love to start: love is the natural state of being with another person. What I mean by this is that when we are with other persons and we are in touch with our emotions, we find kindness, compassion, encouragement, trust, gentleness, consideration, and warm regard naturally arising for others. When we are with others, we can verbally communicate our feelings with gentle declarations, emphatic exclamations, and earnest descriptions, but only when we are truly in touch with our own feelings. Verbally saying, “I love you,” and how one says it, is an …
On submission and surrender
There are many moments in life when we are faced with the unknown. With each beautifully unknown moment we are able to grow, to change, to define and redefine ourselves, and to come to a better understanding of who we are and where we stand in this world. These events occur, unbidden, and we can easily feel defeated and submit to whatever life throws at us. In those moments when we submit to another person or to the world, we accept an external definition of who we are and what is possible. A child in a new class is assigned …
On accepting a compliment
There are a multitude of reactions whenever I give a compliment to another person, usually along the lines of genuine acceptance, a greedy grab, cold rejection, casual dismissal, or even a minimization to the point of not being a personal compliment at all. I’m talking about an actual compliment, a felt statement of appreciation and respect for another person, not empty praise, which does not truly touch a person’s sense of worth or their impact upon another person. Compliments are our way of reaching out to another person, holding our emotions, giving a place in our hearts, and acknowledging the …
On thinking about sex
I often think about sex, more specifically the complicated way we come to understand ourselves as sexual beings. I think about all the ways that we, as a society, and fellow human beings, talk about sex trivially even as it is sensationalized. Most people are comfortable discussing sex in terms of numbers, timing, and measurements, but rarely in terms of emotions and meaning. However, we must discuss the emotion and meaning of sex if we are ever to think honestly about sex. There are many ways that a person can run away from examining their sexual nature. A person can …
On saying “yes” to “no”
On saying yes to no I think of integrity as the internal place from where we find our own footing in this world. It is how we learn to stand up for who we are. It is how we learn to love ourselves. It is essential for confidence, conviction, and character, not in the sense of thinly drawn personal motifs and habitual euphemisms, but character in the sense of the impression that we leave on others and on the world. Our presence. Our self-worth. Our ability to love. Our footprint. Figuring out what we want is difficult. Declaring what we …